Projections

In a movie theater, you look at the screen, you never look at the back. The projector is in the back. The film is not really on the screen, it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists in the projector, in the back, but you never look at that. Your mind is at the back of everything. Your mind is the projector. But you always look at the screen - at the everything.

When you’re in love, the person is beautiful. When you hate, the person is ugly. You never become aware of how the same person can be beautiful and ugly.

The only way to reach the truth is to learn how to be immediate in your vision. The mind is the problem, because the mind projects its images on the screen you’re looking at. What you see is just your projection. And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in his own world.

We get caught up in projecting movies of our own making onto the situations and people surrounding us. Instead of taking responsibility for our own expectations, desires and judgments, we attribute them to others. A projection can be good or bad, beautiful or ugly, disturbing or comforting, but it is still a projection that prevents us from seeing reality as it is. The only way out is to recognize the game.

—Oshos